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Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind...

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  • Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind...




    Wipe out a single memory

    Drug can clear away one fearful memory while leaving another intact.
    Kerri Smith



    A single, specific memory has been wiped from the brains of rats, leaving other recollections intact.

    The study adds to our understanding of how memories are made and altered in the brain, and could help to relieve sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) of the fearful memories that disrupt their lives. The results are published in Nature Neuroscience1.

    The brain secures memories by transferring them from short-term to long-term storage, through a process called reconsolidation. It has been shown before that this process can be interrupted with drugs. But Joseph LeDoux of the Center for Neural Science at New York University and his colleagues wanted to know how specific this interference was: could the transfer of one specific memory be meddled with without affecting others?

    "Our concern was: would you do something really massive to their memory network?" says LeDoux.

    Scary music

    To find out, they trained rats to fear two different musical tones, by playing them at the same time as giving the rats an electric shock. Then, they gave half the rats a drug known to cause limited amnesia (U0126, which is not approved for use in people), and reminded all the animals, half of which were still under the influence of the drug, of one of their fearful memories by replaying just one of the tones.

    When they tested the rats with both tones a day later, untreated animals were still fearful of both sounds, as if they expected a shock. But those treated with the drug were no longer afraid of the tone they had been reminded of under treatment. The process of re-arousing the rats' memory of being shocked with the one tone while they were drugged had wiped out that memory completely, while leaving their memory of the second tone intact.
    ....

  • #2
    Fascinating!

    BTW, is the film any good?
    There's an Opera in my macbook.

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    • #3
      I rent the DVD recently not expecting anything special but it was suprisingly good...

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      • #4
        I liked it too.
        ______________________________
        Nothing is impossible, some things are just unlikely.

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        • #5
          We saw it last year. Excellent movie.
          Dr. Mordrid
          ----------------------------
          An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

          I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

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          • #6
            What were we talking about now?
            P.S. You've been Spanked!

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            • #7
              Who are all of you?


              ...



              Seriously, this drug is for real, and they're pushing hard to get it approved for humans. SCARRRRRRYYYYYYY!
              The Internet - where men are men, women are men, and teenage girls are FBI agents!

              I'm the least you could do
              If only life were as easy as you
              I'm the least you could do, oh yeah
              If only life were as easy as you
              I would still get screwed

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              • #8
                So like, if you go out with a girl and perform horribly in bed, if she decides to give you a second chance, you give her this drug and perform horribly again, only this time on purpose. The next day she forgets both times ever happened?
                "For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism."

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                • #9
                  No, GHB is already old news, and you only have to be bad once.

                  Sorry.
                  There's an Opera in my macbook.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by TransformX View Post
                    So like, if you go out with a girl and perform horribly in bed, if she decides to give you a second chance, you give her this drug and perform horribly again, only this time on purpose. The next day she forgets both times ever happened?
                    or you give her the drug and make her play with her favorite vibrator and she forgets what an orgasm is and then it doesn't really matter. Plus you'll make her extra-happy the next time you give her one...

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                    • #11
                      I just don't believe that this can possibly be targeted enough. How much are you going to forget? How much collateral damage will there be? Memory is FAR more complex than just "remind me of this and then we can zap it". You'd be zapping everything around it, too, and that could be very bad. What if you had a horrible memory of a traumatic event on the school playground as a kid, but it was the same playground on which you discovered your lifelong love of tennis? You zap the bad memory but now you can't figure out why you own a racquet...

                      And not to mention the fact that memories are comprised of many senses. You start deleting things and you never know WHAT you could do to your brain's wiring.

                      I'm not saying I think it doesn't work, I'm sure it does exactly what they claim - erases a particular fear from the brain of a mouse. But there's LITTLE way to determine how much ELSE it erases when you're dealing with mice.
                      Last edited by Gurm; 13 March 2007, 08:46.
                      The Internet - where men are men, women are men, and teenage girls are FBI agents!

                      I'm the least you could do
                      If only life were as easy as you
                      I'm the least you could do, oh yeah
                      If only life were as easy as you
                      I would still get screwed

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        I don't think they r going to use anything like that in humans anytime soon...
                        Just a little background on U0126, small molecule originally developed to block 2 proteins (MEK1/2) that are very often activated in cancers, but also interferes with other proteins. very useful for experiments but very toxic also.
                        p.s. I have plenty of it in the lab

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